Category: Resources

If you are trying to understand, or if you find yourself helping others understand, the fuss about blogs and wikis and basecamp and all the other tools for productive knowledge work that constitute today’s web, here is an excellent new resource. Kathleen Gilroy of the Otter Group has distilled her experiences into a nicely focused review of this terrain. Rather than getting caught up in the details of the technology, she anchors her observations in the “what’s in it for me” perspective that busy knowledge workers will appreciate and value.

Recommended.

Web 2.0 for Business Advantage Published Today

I am pleased to announce the publication of a new white paper Web 2.0 for Business Advantage: A Personal Guide to Profiting from the New Web.

I have been immersed in the world of Web 2.0 for three years now and I still find it difficult to sort out what is going on and what this new way of using the Internet means for me and for my business. I wrote this Guide to Web 2.0 in the first person because so much of what I read about Web 2.0 is abstract. Here I wanted to tell my own stories and experiences and explain things in plain terms that make sense for the small business person, student, educator, or non-profit executive.

Web 2.0 for Business Advantage explores what is driving the dramatic adoption of Web 2.0 and how you can profit from it. The guide covers key advantages that can be had from smartly deploying Web 2.0: building an online presence; personal information management and the new desktop; and the new collaboration.

In each section we cover the big ideas and new capacities that are driving the opportunity. We also talk about our experience with three business problems that were solved with Web 2.0 solutions and explore what happened as we worked to implement the new models and services: podcasting for learning; innovation in financial services; and learning networks at the American Library Association.

You can see the full table of contents and download an excerpt at our site. You can purchase a pdf of Web 2.0 for Business Advantage for $9.95 at the Otter Group Store.

I sometimes think I spend half my working day reading PDF files of one sort or another. Foxit Reader has lowered my blood pressure substantially by eliminating the lag waiting for Adobe Reader to load. I still use Adobe Acrobat when I need to create something complex, but otherwise I’ve set my defaults to use Foxit Reader to open PDF files. And it’s free! Thanks to Lifehacker for the pointer.

Download of the Day: Foxit Reader 2.0 (Windows)

Windows only: PDF reader and Lifehacker favorite Foxit Reader has just released a new 2.0 version.

For those of you who don’t know what Foxit Reader is, prepare to have your PDF world rocked. You don’t need Adobe Reader to load up for 5 minutes, freezing your computer 4 times in the process, just to view a PDF. In fact, Foxit loads up practically instantly, and has never frozen my computer for any amount of time. The new version offers an interactive form filler, support for add-ons, Javascript support, improved printing, and more. Unless you’re doing some serious creating/editing of PDFs, Foxit is likely the only PDF reader you’ll ever need, so go download it – you’ll be so glad you did. — Adam Pash

Foxit Reader

If you’re doing knowledge work and not using mindmapping yet, you should be. Chuck Frey’s survey offers good insight into why.

Mind mapping survey results now available

During the month of August, I conducted a survey of business users of mind mapping software. My goals were to learn what executives are doing with mind mapping software, how it benefits them and what’s keeping it from being more widely used in business. The results were outstanding: over 500 people filled out the survey. Here is the URL where you can view the survey results.

[Cross posted at Future Tense]

One of my colleagues at work recently asked which bloggers I might recommend that also deal with the future of work and the changes technology continues to elicit in organizations. His question was well-timed as there are several fine thinkers who have taken to blogging in the last several months that have much to add to this ongoing conversation.

I’ve previously mentioned John Sviokla (Sviokla’s Context) and Espen Andersen (Applied Abstractions) who were both colleagues at Harvard. There are three other academics/ex-academics who I find particularly cogent on the topic of managing and leading knowledge-based organizations.

David Maister created and taught a course on managing service-based operations during my MBA days; an area that has since grown to become one of the major organizing themes of the curriculum there. Since then, David has gone on to become one of the pre-eminent consultants to professional services organizations. He is blogging at Passion, People and Principles. Although his ostensible focus in on services organizations, the challenges they face make them a laboratory for the kinds of knowledge work issues that all organizations will face. David is also the author of several of the best books on consulting and professional services, including The Trusted Advisor and True Professionalism : The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career.

Another Harvard blogger is Andrew McAfee who teaches in the technology and operations management group, which has become the home of the most robust thinking about these topics at Harvard. His blog title, The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Business and Their Leaders, lacks a bit in the snappy department, but the content is first rate. Recently, he has been leading the charge to map out and define the notion of Enterprise 2.0 in places as diverse as the Sloan Management Review and wikipedia.

Over on the West Coast at Stanford, we have Bob Sutton the author of several excellent books, most recently  Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management. His blog is Work Matters. Sutton has been collaborating with Jeff Pfeffer, also of Stanford, to promote the practice of evidence-based management, which, like evidence-based medicine,

means finding the best evidence that you can, facing those facts, and acting on those facts – rather than doing what everyone else does, what you have always done, or what you thought was true. It isn’t an excuse for inaction. Leaders of organizations must have the courage to act on the best facts they have right now, and the humility to change what they do as better information is found. [Evidence-Based Management]

Sutton and Pfeffer have also launched a website and a group blog to promote evidence-based management. You might also want to check out The Knowing-Doing Gap : How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action by Pfeffer and Sutton and Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, one of Sutton’s earlier books.

Kathleen Gilroy and the folks at the Otter Group in Boston are putting on a workshop in Boston on October 25th called “Everybody’s a CEO Bootcamp.” Here’s their basic pitch:

Everybody’s a CEO: Basic Training is for you if:

You are still mystified by the wildly popular new world of blogs, podcasting, and RSS and wondering how you can use these technologies to reach more people and improve your marketing and sales.
You need to understand just where you can make the greatest contribution and want to tap into a network of like-minded people to help you figure it out and then make it happen.

Looks like a good group of presenters and a solid agenda if you’re interested in moving from tire-kicking to action for your organization.  

Rick Klau pointed me to a great new WordPress plugin – Landing Sites. If you come here by way of a search engine, this plugin will identify other posts on McGee’s Musings that might relate to your search. You can find the plugin here – Landing Sites 1.3. It took me a little bit of tinkering to get it to work and display reasonably. In a perfect world, I will eventually clean up the display some more, but it works well enough now to roll out. Thanks, Rick.

New WordPress plugin – Landing Sites

… I love it. If you’re running a WordPress site, it’s a brilliant plugin that should help your search visitors find what they want and increase page views within your site. What’s not to like? [tins:::Rick Klau’s weblog]

UPDATE: To make this as useful as it might be, I have finally begun the process of migrating my archives into WordPress. This is a bit of a kluge to take old posts made using Radio and massaging them so that they look reasonable in their new home. I haven’t quite found a smooth way to do this yet automagically, so if you do go wandering in the archives here, you may find bits and pieces that are occasionally ugly. Bear with me.